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The Satirized Is the Satirist, or Who Bought the “Journalists”?

Wednesday 3 June 2015 by Bradley M. Kuhn

I watched the most recent Silicon Valley episode last night.
I laughed at some parts (not as much as a usual episode) and then there was a
completely unbelievable tech-related plot twist — quite out of
character for that show. I was surprised.

In the years since Lyons' first anti-software freedom article (yes, there
were more), I've watched many who once helped me enforce the GPL change
positions and oppose GPL enforcement (including allies who once received
criticism alongside me). Many such allies went even further —
publicly denouncing my work and regularly undermining GPL enforcement politically.

Attacks by people like Dan Lyons — journalists well connected with
industry trade associations and companies — are one reason so many
people are too afraid to enforce the GPL. I've wondered for years why the
technology press has such a pro-corporate agenda, but it eventually became
obvious to me in early 2005 when listening to yet another David Pogue Apple
product review: nearly the entire tech press is bought and paid for by the very companies
on which they report! The cartoonish level of Orwellian fear across our
industry of GPL enforcement is but one example of many for-profit corporate
agendas that people like Lyons have helped promulgate through their
pro-company reporting.

Meanwhile, I had taken Silicon Valley (until this week) as
pretty good satire on the pathetic state of the technology industry today.
Perhaps Alec Berg and Mike Judge just liked Lyons' script — not even
knowing that he is a small part of the problem they seek to criticize.
Regardless as to why his script was produced, the line between satirist and
the satirized is clearly thinner than I imagined; it seems just as thin as
the line between technology journalist and corporate PR employee.

I still hope that Berg and Judge seek, just as Judge did in Office
Space, to pierce the veil of for-profit corporate manipulation of
employees and users alike. However, for me, the luster of their achievement
fades when I realize at least some of their creative collaborators
participate in the central to the problem they criticize.

Shall we start a letter writing campaign to convince them to donate some
of Silicon Valley's proceeds to Free Software charities? Or, at
the very least, to convince Berg to write one of his usually excellent
episodes about how the technology press is completely corrupted by the
companies on which they report?

Both previously and presently, I have been employed by and/or done work for various organizations that also have views on Free, Libre, and Open Source Software. As should be blatantly obvious, this is my website, not theirs, so please do not assume views and opinions here belong to any such organization. Since I do co-own ebb.org with my wife, it may not be so obvious that these aren't her views and opinions, either.